Headline: When does passion overcome fear?
Summary:
Music is one of the fundamental elements of life on Earth. It provides people with a sense of emotional connect, motivation, and purpose. It teaches amazing life skills like team work and critical thinking. Even more practically speaking, it also can put people through college, as it did me.
Unfortunately, band directors have found themselves dealing with a myriad of issues that often prevent them from providing their students with a thorough music education. The issue that perpetuates this dynamic the most is lack of personnel. Broadly speaking, American football has seven positions that require a specialty coach. Not to mention two coordinators and a head coach to run the organization at large. Often they have even more than this— it is exceedingly rare to see a football team that is under-staffed. Bands, by contrast, have at least four sections that require individual instruction. Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, and Color guard. This is at a minimum as even with those four sections, you have multiple sub-families. It is, unfortunately, exceedingly rare to find four (or more) person band staffs. It is even rare to find band staffs larger than two people. This leaves band directors stretched thin and unable to deliver consistent, in depth instruction EVEN IF they know the content. There simply is no time to do so.
This comparison is certainly not an effort to demonized football or any sports. It is merely to compare the two activities to draw a reference of what band directors often are left with.
I cannot solve all of these problems myself, however, I can put forth my best effort to help. At The Percussion Room, we want to provide students and band directors with practical, straightforward demonstrations of how to execute the fundamental, and ultimately advanced, techniques that are required to be a thriving percussionist in todays musical world.
Backstory:
Like every drummer, I started on pots and pans in the kitchen, graduated up to a drum set around five years old, and joined band in sixth grade. Attending a small town school in rural Louisiana, my band director served as both our junior high and high school band director with no supplemental support. He did an exceptional job, but I quickly found myself in need of supplemental instruction. The internet was a fantastic resource and I often found myself spending hours in front of the computer screen watching and modeling my playing after these fantastic players and teachers that generously offered their knowledge for free. This knowledge ultimately earned me a scholarship that covered all of my tuition at Mississippi State University, where I marched on the drumline for three years and was the captain my final year there. Not only that, but during my time there I often spent my summers and falls working with band directors in a situation that was the same or similar to my hometown band director. When I came in to work with their percussionists, they would often tell me something to the effect of “I really wish we had a full time percussion instructor on staff.” When asked why that was not the case, the response was almost always the same. The school just could not find it in their budget to hire another band director. While this was discouraging, I did my best to teach the kids as much as I could in the limited time we had together. I ultimately graduated in 2020 with my Bachelors of Music Education and prepared to start a career in public education.
Once I got into the work force, I began feeling like I was meant to share my knowledge with others. However, I was filled with doubt. I was scared of what others might think of me—was my knowledge right? Could others explain it better than me? What if everyone feels like I’m a fraud?
I knew I could not live with this doubt. I began my masters in music at Southeastern Louisiana University in 2022. Here, my primary assignment as a graduate assistant was to teach the Spirit of the Southland Drumline. Over the course of my first year at Southeastern, I began growing more confident in my abilities as an instructor. All of my peers and teachers told me how much better the culture and performance of the drumline had grown to become and I finally felt I was at the right point to start this online presence I had always imagined myself having.
Finally, in the summer of 2023, I started my Instagram page, The Percussion Room. I opened it with a series called the “Basic Strokes Series.” The format is to introduce a technique and then do a series of follow up videos expounding upon that technique. Offering in-depth instructions, exercise variations, and helpful tips when approaching these techniques. The goal is to keep these videos under one minute and never longer than two minutes. Not only that, but to have engaging editing and high quality footage that keeps the viewer engaged. I have approached this endeavor fearlessly, promoting my page and posting even when I feel scared. I want to be able to serve as an instructor to students and band directors in the same situation I was in during my early music education. I owe it to my community to embrace my calling and conquer my fear.
